by Emmy Ellis
Down the stairs she went, and once outside, she strode to her car and waited for Damon inside. He got in, and they were off to Robin’s Way.
“I made an appointment,” she said.
“Good.”
How was it he knew exactly what she was talking about? In tune or what?
“How do you feel about that?” he asked.
“Is that question meant to be funny?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, that’s what therapists say, isn’t it? ‘And how do you feel about that?’ in a droning, patronising voice.”
“Shit. I didn’t mean it like that. Please don’t get into one of your snits over it.”
“I’ll try not to.” God, I’m such a cow. She opted for a different subject. “Are you handling Jones, or shall I?”
“You have a go first. If she’s in her usual mood and winds you up, I’ll take over.”
“Maybe she won’t be so belligerent now her son’s dead.”
“Tracy… That was a bit insensitive, love.”
She bit her tongue before she put her leg in her mouth, let alone her foot. “Sorry, but she gets on my wick. I’ll attempt to be professional with her, okay? But you know how it goes with that woman, so I can’t promise anything.”
“Yeah, best not to promise. You usually break them—on purpose, you sod.”
She laughed.
“So,” he said, “we’re going to see her to find out if she knew Irene Roberts?”
“Yes. Might as well go and visit Irene’s old neighbour while we’re at it. Number eighty-four. Jones might not know Michelle Armitage—that’s what the woman’s name is, isn’t it?—because she lives at the other end of the street, but it’s worth a shot.”
In Robin’s Way, she parked outside Jones’ and took a deep breath. They left the car and approached her door, only for it to swing open in true Jones fashion before they’d even had a chance to knock.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Jones snapped. “I’m in there making a cup of tea”—she jerked her thumb backwards—“and who do I see but a bad penny—you—and a shiny, welcome pound coin—him. What do you want?” She crossed her arms beneath her huge tits and glared.
“Still the same then, Mrs Jones? Grief obviously hasn’t mellowed you,” Tracy said. “We’re investigating a murder, and we—”
“Bloody hell! Another one? This place has gone to the dogs since you two rolled into town.”
“Actually, it was a shithole with a high crime rate before we arrived, so nothing’s changed. And, yes, there’s been another one, although it hopefully won’t be anything to do with you like the last three.” It was low of Tracy to get in a second dig like that, but it wasn’t like she gave a toss. She gave as good as she got.
“Still spiteful, I see.” Jones shook her head in obvious disgust.
“Do you know an Irene Roberts?” Tracy waited for the spiel about Jones not being nosy. It came immediately. Once the woman had finished, Tracy said, “Well?” and resisted tapping her foot.
“I don’t know her well. She moved recently. Old people’s home, so the word is on the grapevine.” She sniffed. “Won’t catch me in one of those places.”
“Did you ever hear any rumours about Irene?”
“Might have done.”
Tracy gritted her teeth. “What did you hear, or are you waiting for me to beg? Because I won’t, you know. I’ll find out from someone else along here.” She indicated the street, raising her hand. “Your call.”
Jones pursed her lips and stared up as though thinking.
More like trying to wind me up.
“Well…” Jones lowered her gaze to make eye contact with Tracy. “There was something I heard once, years ago. When I was in the local little shop, Michelle was talking to the cashier who happens to be her sister.”
“And that’s Michelle Armitage, I take it.”
Jones looked as though her ego bubble had been burst. She must have thought Tracy didn’t know who Michelle was.
“Yes, as it happens,” Jones huffed. “Michelle was saying something about people being after Irene. You know, after her, and not in a good way either.”
“I know that already, yes. Anything else?”
“Well, if you know, what are you asking me for?”
“In case you had any other information.”
“No. Like I said, I’m not nosy.”
“Of course you aren’t.” Tracy bit back a nasty retort. “Well, thank you for your time.”
“’Ere, don’t you go walking off without telling me who’s been bumped off. And none of this ‘We’re not at liberty to say’ rubbish like they use on my soaps either.”
“We’re not at liberty to say, Mrs Jones, sorry.” Sorry my arse.
Tracy led the way down the path, Damon tailing her, and they walked side by side towards Armitage’s in silence until Jones was out of earshot.
“You did well, considering,” Damon said.
“I wanted to rip her bloody head off.”
“I know. Glad you didn’t. Can’t be doing with you being had up for murder.”
Tracy’s stomach clenched, and a cold sweat broke out all over. She swallowed, her throat dry, and couldn’t risk glancing at him for fear he’d see the truth in her eyes. It had just been a comment, something anyone might say, but it had hit too close to home.
“Can’t be doing with it myself. That’s why I didn’t go for her. Here we are, look.” She gestured to a gravel path that led to a pristine white UPVC door. She walked up to it and pressed the bell button.
The door opened a smidgen, and Tracy brought out her ID at the same time as Damon. They showed the woman, only a slice of her visible through the three-inch gap. One blue eye, no nose, a ruddy cheek, one half of bright-red lips, and a cloud of wispy white hair.
“Michelle Armitage? DI Tracy Collier and DS Damon Hanks. We’re here to talk about Irene.”
“Oh.” She widened the gap and stepped back. Slight of frame, she looked like a gentle breeze would knock her over. “Better come in then.”
They went inside and waited while Armitage closed the door. She shuffled into the living room, Tracy and Damon following. Damon got out his notebook, and after Armitage offered them a seat, they sat on the sofa while the woman took a pine wooden rocking chair with a pink paisley cushion on it.
“We know about what you told our colleague, Michelle, and we just wanted to see if you’d remembered anything else.”
Armitage rocked, gripping the polished armrests. “I have, as it happens. Funny how that goes. You think you’ve recalled everything, then in the middle of the night, when you’re staring at the ceiling, something else pops up.”
Tracy smiled. “Can you tell me what it is?”
“Well, shortly after Irene had told me the other thing—you know, about people coming to get her—she said something that struck me as odd. She was poorly with the flu, and I’d gone round there with some over-the-counter medication for her as she didn’t like to leave the house if she could help it. Her son was away on holiday with his family at the time, see, so he couldn’t get them for her like he usually does. Anyway, I had a key to hers, so I let myself in, and she was on the sofa under a blanket. She had her eyes closed, and she said, all delirious like, ‘Is that you? Have you found me, Carol?’ Well, as far as I knew, Irene didn’t know any Carol.”
“So that was odd?” Tracy didn’t see it that way. People had lives before they met certain people, and she could have known this Carol before she became friends with Armitage.
“No, the next bit was odd. She said something like, ‘I’m a wicked woman, doing what I did, so if you’re here for me, I understand.’ Then she said, ‘I’m so sorry your husband left you because of me.’ You can imagine what went through my mind, can’t you? That Irene had an affair with someone. But it didn’t seem to ring true. Irene wasn’t that type of woman.”
Oh, she was, except what she did wasn’t affairs as far as we know.
“Anything else?” Tracy asked.
“No. But if I think of something more, I’ll give that nice lady a ring, the one I spoke to before.”
Tracy could have been affronted at that. She wasn’t. Not many people would choose to speak to her if they could help it. She wouldn’t speak to herself in someone else’s position either. “All right, that would be a big help. Thank you.”
Her phone trilled, and she glanced at Damon, telling him with her eyes to wrap the interview up while she took the call outside. On the pavement, she answered without looking at the screen.
“Hello, DI Collier.”
“It’s me, boss.”
Vic Atkins, the daytime desk sergeant.
“Oh fuck…” she said.
“You got that right. There’s been another murder.”
Chapter Fifteen
A swarm of SOCOs took pictures of the car park outside the warehouses, searched for evidence, and placed markers every time they found something. Tracy stood beside Gilbert in a marquee, dressed in the required whites, Damon off somewhere behind her, probably so he could turn away and leg it out without them seeing once the body was revealed.
“These bloody buildings ought to either be torn down or revamped.” Gilbert shook his head. “They’re an eyesore as they are, a waste, not to mention this is the ideal spot to do things like this.” He flapped his gloved hand at the sheet-covered body. “No one comes down that alley at night unless they’re up to no good, and most people wouldn’t visit here via the road when there’s nothing but the warehouses and that old office block.”
Tracy glanced over at the offices. A man had run his accountancy firm from one of them back in the day, had sex with two of his secretaries, raped a third, and ended up being a father to three kids who’d then got murdered one by one recently. That case would live inside Tracy forever. It was her first in this town, her first as the lead detective of the serious crimes squad that had been set up as lawbreaking had skyrocketed around these parts.
“I have to agree,” she said. “This place is basically asking for people to come here to do bad things. Drug handovers, the sex workers on the other side of the road from the alley doing business—” A thought cut off her words. Was that the patch Lisa worked, just a few feet away? Or did she frequent the other one?
Dare I go out there one night and see?
No. Don’t.
“Hmm.” Gilbert crouched. “Best you have a look, make your own mind up about what you’ll see—what I mean by that is: who did it.”
“That doesn’t sound good.” She didn’t go down on her haunches, preferring to stand.
“Are you ready?”
She nodded.
He pulled the sheet back. Female. Long black hair. Slender, and with a neck that gaped open, dark-gold fat globules at the edges, almost dried out, like crystallised pus, what with the heat of the night and this morning. Last evening’s downpour had done nothing but ramp up the humidity. The weather was far too hot, even for summer—the UK wasn’t supposed to be like the fucking Med, was it?
Those who said global warming wasn’t real were in denial.
“Um…okay.” Tracy took a deep breath.
She looks like Lisa…
The method of murder was obvious. She recalled Gilbert’s lesson about blood—this woman had had her throat slit while she’d been alive. Crimson coated her clothing, her face, where it had perhaps shot upwards from her heart pumping away, and landed on her skin, an obscene version of a red paint splash. A whole can of it.
“Bloody hell,” Tracy said.
“That’s one way of putting it. Bloody hell. Get it?”
“That was lame for you,” she said.
Gilbert grinned and pointed to the victim’s neck. “See that slit there?”
“Christ, how can I not?”
“Well, that was a right-handed person going from the victim’s right to her left. The slice starts shallow, then goes deeper, so more force at the middle and tail end of it. This also suggests to me she wasn’t in this position—on her back—when the slice occurred. She was more likely on her left side. Harder to get good purchase that way, which further corroborates my theory about the shallow end.”
“But what about her facial injuries?” she asked.
There were many. Bruised eyes, both of them swollen so it appeared she had boiled eggs beneath her skin with a black line down the middle of each. Her nose looked broken, skewing off to the side. And her lips—Christ. Split in two places on the top one, the lower reminding Tracy of Botox injections gone wrong.
“Someone kicked her head in,” Gilbert said. “An angry someone. What do you think about who did it?”
Tracy shrugged. “I’m inclined to say it was a boyfriend or an ex with a bone to pick. Maybe she pissed him off.”
“Pissed him off quite a bit, going by this. Maybe she didn’t cook his dinner just right—and I’m not making a joke there. It doesn’t take much to tip some people over the edge.”
“Sadly, no, it doesn’t. Or it could be a random attack—I say that because of the location. Given that just down the alley is a pick-up spot for sex workers…you can see where I’m going with that.” She peered at the face closely, unable to tell if it was Lisa because it was in such a mess. Would it bother her if it was her? She allowed herself a second or two to think about that and came up with an answer she didn’t much like. She’d be relieved she wouldn’t have to tell any more lies if this was her sister. She could let go of John’s murder—Lisa would well and truly go to her grave with that particular death laid solely at her feet. “But I have a feeling you’re going to squash that and tell me something I don’t want to know.”
Gilbert stood, his knees or some other joint of his clicking. “I might be wrong, but I’d say the same knife was used on Mrs Roberts.”
Although she’d kind of been expecting that, Tracy still internally said what? “How the hell do you know that?”
“Look at the beginning of the slice. It’s got the same strange curl to it as Mrs Roberts. Maybe the blade is bent on the end, or the killer has a signature flick, as it were, a way he slices.”
“Okay… So now I have to work out why these two women’s deaths are related. An old lady and a young one. Both sex workers—all right, Irene gave it up years ago, but still. And I assume this one’s young. Can’t really tell, can we?”
“I can by the skin.” He moved the woman’s top, stiff with dried blood. It was more like he lifted a sheet of cardboard. “See? Young skin. Twenties, I’d say, maybe closing in on thirty.”
Her stomach was pink from where the blood had soaked through, but no, this wasn’t an older woman. Her belly was flat, as though she hadn’t eaten an awful lot in her life—or she’d worked out, so no flab had had time to form.
“This doesn’t look like the stomach of someone who’s had kids,” she said, thinking of her own belly.
“Oh, you’d be surprised. Some women don’t get stretchmarks, and their tummies go down nicely as though they’d never had a baby in there.”
“Interesting. So, considering what I’ve found out so far…” Tracy bit her lip. “I’ve got someone ‘coming to get’ Mrs Roberts—and they did. I’m now wondering whether this is some kind of network this lady here was a part of. You know, an organised gang that goes about targeting people for a price? I’m thinking that because a neighbour of Mrs Roberts said she was convinced someone was after her—after Mrs Roberts. Had this lady here outlived her usefulness? She knew too much so had to be silenced? So many possibilities, and I’m letting my imagination take over.”
“I don’t envy you working this out.” Gilbert grimaced.
“I don’t envy you,” she said, thinking of him having to cut up this victim to find out whatever he could to help Tracy.
“I’ve told you before. Justice spurs me on. They deserve it.” He gazed at the body, his mouth downturned, eyebrows pulled together. “So much hate with this one. Makes you wonder why a person fee
ls such a high degree of it—enough to kill someone.”
“I’ve found people’s pasts have a lot to do with it.” Don’t they just. “Some have endured so much, and sometimes, there comes a point where they can’t take anymore, and something just…pops. Like their brain short-circuits, and they do this mad act and wonder how they ever did it once it’s all over.” That wasn’t strictly true. Tracy knew damn well why she’d killed—and she didn’t feel an ounce of remorse over it. No, John had been a filthy, depraved bastard, and he didn’t deserve any justice. She didn’t have to wonder why she’d done it at all.
If only there was a law that allowed people to get away with killing their abusers.
“Still doesn’t justify it, though,” Gilbert said.
Would he say the same if Tracy told him her story? The real story?
“I suppose not, but I do have sympathy for some killers. Those who have it in their nature, no, but those who have been nurtured in a terrible life and become someone who kills? Yes.” Those words came out sharper than she would have liked.
Gilbert stared at her, his eyebrows raised. “That sounded a bit passionate.”
“I see the other side of the fence,” she said. He could take from that what he fancied. “It’s not always black and white. There are colours, so many of them, and so deep, most people wouldn’t understand unless they’ve been there.”
“Have you?” He rested a hand on her upper arm.
“I’ll tell you a bit about myself one day. Then you’ll understand what I mean.”
“Oh…”
“Indeed.” She clapped once, the gloves muffling the slap of skin on skin. “Right. Time to be getting on.”
“An adept way to avoid a conversation if ever I heard one.” He grinned, but it didn’t reach his soulful eyes.
Tracy had to turn away from them.
“You’ve been terribly hurt, haven’t you?” he asked, squeezing her arm gently.
“You could say that.” She stared at the body instead of him. “But I’m getting help. Finally. Tonight, after work. Someone to talk to. It’s time to let it all go.”